Liveblogging a REIN meeting – Part 4

byChrisonNovember 8, 2008

(I set out to liveblog a REIN meeting. What I didn’t plan for is how long a meeting is and how long they run. At about 4.5 hours, I wrote nearly 4,000 words and my batter died with 45 minutes or an hour left. I’ve broken things in to four parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. Enjoy!)

9:04 U2’s Beautiful Day is on, which means its go-time. There’s also a clanging bell sound to get everyone back in. Russell is back on stage doing a quick summary of what’s gone on thus far. Russ has mentioned that rates now at 4% prime plus 1% are still less than 6% prime minus 0.75%. You throw in the longer amortization and you’ve got better cash flow.

9:08 Don’s on stage for what’s behind the curtain. The squadron of REIN staff is streaming across the room to hand out copies of all the articles. There are about 600 people in the room, filling Hall D.

WBTC-Alberta is about 50 pages plus a 4 page supplemental. They publish it monthly in BC, Alberta and Ontario. 9:10 is the first time Don’s mentioned the Three F’s: Food, Fuel and Fertilizer. He’s talking about people with long term strategies that build up a nice portfolio, wait for a boom and sell ¼ to 1/3 of it. They pay off the rest of it and just sit back with the cash flow and forget about the cycles. Don’s mentioning buying townhouses for $241k earlier, now available for $214k. I’ve seen this in the market too. Are we sad? Nope. Rents have gone up 11% in Edmonton. The prices have gone down, mortgage rents have gone down, and rents have gone up. “The capital gain is the gravy, it’s the cash flow that really truly makes the gain.”

Don likes to call the last three years the “Tiger Woods Years”. He’s looking for markets that go up 6% a year.

9:15REIN members have bought $2.6 billion in real estate (purchase price). On the back of the WBTC booklet is the list of fundamentals. (I’ll post these later.)

9:16 First article is a Warren Buffet article. Buy American. I am. Best line is “fear regarding the long term doesn’t make sense”. Better than the “greedy when other are fearful” line.

Second article’s line? Buy Canada. It’s from a guy who called the credit crisis and made a fortune shorting WaMu and knew the market was going down.

I’m realizing that there’s nothing I can do to describe WBTC. It’s definitely not something you can liveblog. It’s burning through a whole bunch of news, economics reports and other data very quickly. The stack of articles is a great resource. I’ll leave it at that. It wrapped up at 9:46, making it on the quick side of WBTC.

She’s pretty high energy. She brought along Laurie Ann Munzer, who won Olympic gold in Athens and that’s pretty cool. The lead is ‘how to be a champion in your own life’.

Again, I’m not going to be able to liveblog the whole talk, but here are a couple of points.

Why are we talking about athletes in a room full of Real Estate Investors and business owners? Champion exists beyond the context of sport, it’s about mindset.

She went from being a power-skating coach to an NHL skating coach, to being a personal performance coach. Then the figure skaters (whose names I can’t remember; they won in Torino 2006) asked her to “Mentor them to the Olympics”.

Now (10:07) she’s on to A Champion’s List of To-Do’s.

Know where you are going! Have a plan.

Live life backwards! Commit to the plan/vision.

Don’t make mistakes! Every action has an

Know that you already have ‘it’ or you would have (or would be doing) something different. Certainty can

Don’t set goals! Believe in your outcome and make a

Think Small! Dream Act

My battery died around 10:09, so I missed most of the talk. I can’t say I paid a whole lot of attention.

Things wrapped up right around 11. Well worth my time for the whole meeting. Best parts: Peter Kinch’s presentation and Don’s What’s Behind the Curtian. Weakest Part: Steffany, who unfortunately went too long and rambled a little.